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Overview: History, Topics and Methods of Psycholinguistics
What is language? Do animals also have language?
Communication: the transmission of a signal that conveys information.
Signal :the means that conveys the information (e.g. sound, smell)
communicative signal (internationality) vs. informational signal (Q: coughing?)
Language: a systematic means of communicating ideas or feeling by the use of
conventionalized signs, sounds, gesture, or marks having understood meanings
(Webster Dictionary);
an artificial system of signs and symbols, with rules for forming intelligible
communications for use (Chambers Twenties Century Dictionary)
Speech: characterized by the fact that it involves vocalization using articulators (e.g.
tongue, teeth, soft palate, jaw, and nasal cavity as well as vocal cords)
Features of Language
Language is difficult to define, and thus researchers attempted to describe it with languagespecific characteristics.
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Language is voluntary. (under individual control)
Language is symbolic. (represents something other than itself)
Language is systematic. (structure-dependent; rule-based)
Language operates in two different modalities: speech (primary) and writing
Psycholinguistics as a sub-field of linguistics and psychology
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Psychology: Study of human mind Cognition, Memory etc.
Linguistics: Study of human language (Syntax, Semantics, Morphology,
Pragmatics, Phonetics, Phonology (Applied Linguistics: Sociolinguistics,
Computational linguistics, Psycholinguistics etc.)
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Phonetics: The study of speech sounds
Phonology: The study of the sound system of a language
Morphology: The study of internal structure of words
Syntax: The study of the way in which sentences are constructed from
smaller units called constituents
 Semantics: The study of meaning in language
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Psycholinguistics: Study of language processing and language acquisition
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Competence vs. Performance
Competence: the implicit knowledge of language rules which enables us to generate (and
understand) an infinite number of grammatically correct sentences, even when we have
never heard them or said them before.
Performance: our actual language ability, limited by our cognitive capacity like memory,
fatigue, etc. (e.g. multiply center embedded sentence: the mouse the cat the dog chased bit
died.)
Major Topics in Psycholinguistics (but not limited to):
1. First language acquisition
2. Language processing
a. Speech
b. Lexical
c. Sentence
d. Discourse
3. Brain damage and language processing
Major Issues in Psycholinguistics
Innateness of language: nature vs. nurture question
Modularity of language: autonomous vs. interdependent process
Language processing mechanism
Research methods and techniques
History of Psycholinguistics
1. Structuralism (late 19th century) & Functionalism (Early 20th century)
Structuralists attempted to describe the structure of the human mind and of sensations,
images, and feelings by the means of language. Functionalists were interested in what
people do with language and thoughts, rather than the structure of the mind.
2. Behaviorism (early to mid twentieth century)
Early 1900s, behaviorists tried to establish psychology as an empirical science with
scientific methods but devoid of mental constructs like mind, thought, and imagery.
B.F. Skinner in Verbal Behavior (1957) argued that speech was a product of operant
learning processes such as reinforcement, extinction and generalization.
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3. Linguistics (post behaviorism through Chomsky) - nature vs. nurture debate
Noam Chomsky critically reviewed Skinner’s book in 1959; gave rationalist argument that
the potential for language was an innate mental capacity. Chomsky argued that children’s
patterns of language acquisition were too systematic to be the product of parents’ operant
conditioning. Human species has a built-in language acquisition device (LAD).
4. Cognitive psychology (late 1960 – early 1980s); and
Transition from behaviorism to the cognitive perspective: cognitive revolution; the study of
how people perceive, organize, remember, and use information (here, information =
language).
5. Cognitive science (since mid 1980s)
Cognitive science is a interdisciplinary effort that integrates research in linguistics,
(cognitive) psychology, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy in
order to understand more clearly how humans think and communicate.